Duel of Fists is a 1971 Shaw Brothers action-drama directed by Chang Cheh, starring Cheh's favorite dual team of actors, David Chiang and Ti Lung, and is part of the long-running series of the Shaws' output featuring the studio's Golden Triangle of actors. The movie - and its sequel - are both filmed overseas, somewhat a rarity for Shaw Brothers at the time, respectively in Thailand and Japan.
Fan Ke (Chiang) is a successful engineer and also the prized student of a martial arts school owned by his father, who intends to leave the martial arts school behind in order to focus on his career. But one day his father, old in age and dying from a disease, divulged to Fan Ke while on his deathbed that Fan actually has a half-brother born from an affair with a Thai woman twenty three years ago. The only evidence of the half-brother's existence is an old, black-and-white photo taken from the brother's childhood and the knowledge that the brother is currently a kickboxer in Bangkok; eager to fulfil his father's last wish, Fan Ke decides to travel overseas in order to seek the brother he never knew he have. Along the way, Fan gets into trouble with the local Thai mob led by their boss, Chiang Nan, while befriending Wen Lieh (Ti Lung), a Chinese-Thai half breed who happens to be one of the best kickboxers. Could they be related?...
Well, duh. But obviously, NOBODY saw that plot twist coming.
The movie spawned a sequel a year later, The Angry Guest. Having acknowledged each other as brothers, Wen Lieh decides to return to Hong Kong with Fan Ke to train at the martial arts school belonging to his late biological father and half-brother. But the Thai mob boss, Chiang Nan, had escaped from prison and intends to seek his revenge by stalking the brothers all the way to Hong Kong, just as the two bash brothers found themselves dragged into a plot involving the Yakuza. They must travel to Tokyo and set things straight.
Co-stars Yasuaki Kurata as Katsu, a dangerous Yakuza enforcer and main villain, who will co-star alongisde David Chiang in a few other movies, including Four Riders and Return of the Deadly Blade.
Tropes found in Duel of Fists
- Asshole Victim: Cannon, a rough, brutal champion boxer who is prone to Unsportsmanlike Gloating and enjoys dealing crippling, often fatal injuries to his opponents, ends up being brutally defeated by Wen Lieh, and moments later, suddenly ambushed and strangled by Mi-tsai, the younger brother of an earlier challenger Cannon killed in the ring weeks ago, intending to avenge his brother in private.
- Badass Biker: Wen Lieh, besides being a champion kickboxer and capable fighter, is also a motorcyclist whose preferred mode of transport through the streets of Bangkok is his trusty Honda motorbike. He also constantly carries his motorcycle helmet everywhere he goes.
- Bash Brothers: Fan Ke and Wen Lieh, upon meeting each other for the first time in the Thai kickboxing arena. And then Fan Ke realized Wen Lieh turns out to be his actual brother.
- Contrived Coincidence: Fan Ke and Wen Lieh became friends after meeting in the same Thai kickboxing ring on the first day. What a coincidence that they turn out to be half-brothers, the former actively trying to seek the latter, without knowing it until later in the film!
- Deadpan Snarker: Fan Ke have plenty of moments like this.Fan Ke (after being threatened to have his guts spilled) : "You'll find my guts to be quite colourful if you do that."
- Distinguishing Mark: The only clue Fan Ke has in order to locate his lost half-brother; his brother have the tattoo of a butterfly on his biceps since birth.
- The Dutiful Son: Fan Ke is willing to fulfill his dying father's request to seek his half-brother and reunite his family together again, even though he'll have to ditch his career as a successful engineer behind.
- Eye Scream: Chiang Ren's Number Two, Xu, suffers this fate when Fan Ke smashes his face into an edged corner, leaving the entire right half of his face bloody with his eye especially bruised. In the second movie, he sports an Eyepatch of Power as a result.
- Fingerpoke Of Doom: Fan Ke, late into the film, reveals that he had somehow obtained the ability to tear apart wood and flesh simply using finger jabs (Never explained - he Suddenly Always Knew That), effortlessly killing a mook who had wounded his brother by shoving three fingers into the mook's midsection, goring his guts out. At which point the remaining mooks ditches their boss, Chiang Ren, much to Chiang Ren's chagrin.
- Finger Wag: Wen Lieh, when surrounded by numerous of Chiang Ren's henchmen, responds to their threats by wagging his finger at them. Before kicking all the asses of his attackers.
- Last Request: One which kicks off the plot: Fan Ke's father, dying from an unknown disease, divulged to his son that he had an affair with a Thai woman which produced a son, telling Fan Ke to seek the brother he never knew he have and ask for forgiveness on the father's behalf.
- Long-Lost Relative: Fan Ke and Wen Lieh; the former is raised in Hong Kong by his father, a martial artist and elderly wushu expert, but it turns out the father had an affair with a Thai woman twenty-three years ago while in Bangkok, which is the latter. Fan Ke, to fulfill his dying father's wish, travels to Bangkok to seek his brother, with the only clue being that his brother is a kickboxer with a butterfly tattoo.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: Fan Ke the cool, level-headed protagonist who works as an engineer when not kicking ass is the blue, and his long-lost brother, the rough and tough kickboxer who talks mostly with his fists is the red.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: In the final battle, Chiang Ren had surrounded himself with mooks and ordered them to kill Fan Ke and Wen Lieh. While the two brothers held their own reasonably well, a knife-wielding mook managed to slash Wen Lieh's arm, at which point Fan Ke kills said mook by digging out his guts using only four fingers. The remainder of Chiang Ren's underlings quickly flees, leaving Chiang Ren to face the brothers alone.
- Sickening "Crunch!": The final battle is finished with Fan Ke defeating Chiang Ren, by stomping his right knee and breaking his leg. With a really audible snapping sound.
- Sore Loser: Cannon, the final opponent of Wen Lieh in the boxing ring. Happily beating weaker opponents to a cripple or to their deaths, and then lashing out and threatening to beat up his up his assistants after he himself suffered a humiliating defeat in the hands (or feet) of Wen Lieh.
- Weaponized Headgear: While battling Chiang Ren and his mooks, Wen Lieh, being a Badass Biker, uses his helmet as an Improvised Weapon.
- Wham Line: Delivered by Fan Ke to Wen Lieh, after the latter had bested his final opponent, Cannon, on the boxing ring.Fan Ke: "I'm your brother!"
Tropes found in Duel of Fists 2: The Angry Guest
- Construction Vehicle Rampage: The final battle between Fan Ke, Wen Lieh and their trainees against Katsu and his Yakuza brawlers takes place in a quarry. Late in the fight, Fan Ke and Wen Lieh hijacks to bulldozers and starts using them to crush enemy thugs.
- Destination Defenestration: Fan Ke and Wen Lieh tosses more than one Yakuza thug out of a few windows of a traditional Japanese-style house, although given the setting, the windows are made of paper, thereby averting the broken glass that comes so often with this trope.
- Disc-One Final Boss: Chiang Ren, the returning villain of the first film, is introduced breaking out of prison, killing several of Fan Ke's pupils in the wushu academy, and publicly challenges Fan Ke and Wen Lieh to a fight, intending to kill the brothers over his arrest in the previous film. But he gets defeated by the brothers, and the film quickly introduces Katsu, the Yakuza enforcer and new Big Bad.
- Dressing as the Enemy: Chiang Ren's prison breakout from a Bangkok prison early in the film had him strangling a guard, stealing the guard's uniform and strolling his way through a courtyard to a guard tower.
- Giant Mook: There is a hulking Yaukza enforcer (played by Bolo Yeung) among Katsu's mooks who puts up a slightly harder fight against the brothers, before Fan Ke finally beats him down.
- Grappling-Hook Pistol: A grappling hook fired by a launcher from one of his subordinates is what allows Chiang Ren to escape his prison while on a guard tower in the opening scene.
- Handicapped Badass: Chiang Ren, having been crippled by Fan Ke in the ending of the previous movie, now walks with a crutch. But he's still as deadly and as murderous as ever, even beating two of Fan Ke's friends - both which are kung fu students - using the crutch as a weapon, and still poses a challenge to Fan Ke and Wen Lieh in their penultimate confrontation.
- No Peripheral Vision: When Fan Ke and Wen Lieh, having killed off several of Yamaguchi's underlings and hijacked two bulldozers, which they send advancing slowly towards the last two underlings... for some reason, the two underlings never thought of running sideways or in opposite directions, instead only capable of staying on their spot and shouting as they get crushed.
- Reality Has No Subtitles: None of the dialogue in either film is subtitled, especially in this sequel where Katsu and his underlings often have lengthy conversations in untranslated Japanese, which doesn't matter since it's not relevant to the plot anyway.
- Seppuku: Boss Yamaguchi, the leader to Katsu and the Yakuza's head honcho, often orders this treatment to his underlings who failed him. All of them whom complies, complete with getting decapitated after having their guts disembowelled (although decapitations are all done with a Gory Discretion Shot).
- Shovel Strike: In the construction quarry finale, when Katsu and his mooks starts cheating by drawing knives, Wen Lieh responds by grabbing a shovel. He gets to kill plenty of enemies (with at least one Slashed Throat) with the shovel too, with a lot of gore and blood thrown in.
- Yakuza: They are the villains in the sequel.
